In the previous thread Numtini said: "anti-social behavior is concentrated among DPS classes". Do you believe this is true, and if yes, why would damage dealers be less social (or less competent, as others suggested) than tanks or healers?
- posted by Tobold Stoutfoot @ 3:40 PM Permanent Link
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I think it isn't true, people are in fact antisocial in different ways.

Bailing on your group at the slightest provocation - very much a tank problem.

Pointless perfectionism leading to letting people die unnecessarily leading to drama and group breakup - hold your hands up, healers.

Feeling that you personally never do anything wrong and wipes are to be blamed on other people - dps trait.

Ranting at people for being noobs - everyone.

There are antisocial people in WoW and cross server just recycles them and lets them become more influential.

There are antisocial people in Rift who go onto most Expert runners ignore lists and drop out because they can never find a group.

Its partially true, but it gets dilluted whenever there is external motivation to play a tank or a healer, I think.Initially there is more anti-social behavior among DPS classes because playing a tank or a healer is basically real teamplay. Tank and healer interact with each other and the group, while DPS never interact with healers and only interact with tanks if the want to, and if they don't only the tank is punished for it. In a nutshell, tanking and healing are necessarily about groupplay while DPSing can happen in a bubble where you basically act as if you are playing solo.

Later on tanks and healer developed the traits Stabs mentioned as a defense mechanism. A good indicator for that is that most tanks and healer still only use them when their own fun is lessened by egoistical behavior of others.

However my argumentation only works if everyone picks his role the way we did back then in classic: Everyone just did what was fun for them. When you start handing out additional rewards for tanking (or healing) you inevitably get people who actually didn't choose to tank - they just chose the additional reward and give a fuck about the rest. The last time I had the feeling that every random tank and healer I met did his job because he enjoyed it was in TBC. Starting with Wrath you got people who obviously only chose tank because of short queue times (which is also a kind of reward in the end).

It suggests that DPS are more self-sufficient than tanks or healers for one thing - and also, that they are not interested in 'adding' anything for other people.

I think neither needs to be true; in wow all 3 roles are self-sufficient enough to solo, so from that PoV a healer isn't more social than a DPS. and it would be rather crass to suggest no DPS understands their role as a 'part of the whole', just like the other two. maybe there are such players but it's definitely not inherent in the role IMO, or at least depends highly on what MMO you're talking about. am no fan of the holy trinity these days, but if it's done right then everyone needs everybody and you cannot really go for asocial playstyle.

I think I'm going to go with a cautious yes tempered with some possibility of perception bias.

The mere fact that you will see about three times more DPS than tanks or healers when grouping means that you will see an equivalent amount more drama / antisocial behaviour / anything from DPS than the other roles, but normally one will not be able to properly discount for this.

That being said, if one is antisocially inclined it would be rather counterintuitive to choose a role that is primarily focused on group activity (ie tank or healer), so it may well be that people with these tendencies also show preference for the DPS role. Then again most antisocials don't seem to think of themselves as such, so it might have to be a subconcious thing.

(Same thing goes for DPS being incompetent: might be that "bad" players choose the less responsible role, might just be perception bias.)

I guess which role in your random group has the most anti-social people really depends on which individuals are in your random group. Therefore, I can't generalize and say "People who choose the DPS role for their dungeon runs are usually anti-social."

Then again, I try not to generalize so broadly anyway if I can help it. If I were to assume that all DPS are likely to be jerks, they're all going to seem like jerks to me - even when they're doing things that would normally be understandable or are just making honest mistakes.

A while back I had the theory that since DPS have longer queues they're going to be mostly doing their own thing, making the group content an interruption, and they may not be fully switching mental states from individual to group. In contrast tanks and healers have such fast queues that as they as they are trying to be in a group, they will be in a group, allowing for greater consistency.

I think you have the assumption backwards -- the issue is why the anti-social tend to select a DPS class.

I think it is an issue of responsibility. DPS has historically had the least individual responsibility. (This is changing with the need for interrupts, but the anti-social DPS also thinks that is the tank's job on top of everything else.)

Everyone has to not stand in fire. If the tank or healer fail individually, the group wipes. If the DPS fails individually, that DPSer dies, and the group finishes the pull anyways.

On top of that, you can only really learn to heal or tank in a group, whereas with DPS, you are learning that job your entire time questing. The anti-social ones are afraid to step out of their comfort zone with an audience.

I do think it's true. Playing dps doesn't automatically make anyone anti-social, but if you are anti-social and don't want to play with other people, dps is the only role that really makes sense for you to play. (If you hate having to interact with others, choosing to play a tank or healer is either foolish or masochistic.)

If only people who actually liked grouping ran instances, all roles would act equally social. However, thanks to the dungeon finder it pays off to run instances even if you hate them, it's easy to get into one because you don't need to talk to anyone, and as damage dealer you might as well pretend that you're still soloing, only accompanied by a bunch of helpful NPCs.

I don't think the DPS role is inherently anti-social, but I do think it lends it self toward players moreso than the other roles.

Tanks typcially need to communicate at minimum level for the group to progress, "Kill skull, sheep square, hex diamond." Etc. Healers can also have some need to communicate, also much less than tanks. One could go through an entire dungeon without saying but a simple "yes" or "no" to simple quetions.

As negentropic said, there are 3x more DPS ineach run, therefore 3x more likely to see any type of behavior than from tanks or healers.

Spinks said, "There is a kind of assumption that someone who plays a dps class will only ever play dps classes, and I'm not at all sure that's true"

While I agree that hardly anyone plays one role exclusively, I do have to say that most play one much moreso than the others. One would have to play (and queue for dungeons) in a 1:1:3 ratio in order to have a "zero-sum" effect on the system.

In MMOs I've played enough to have an opinion, obnoxious players tend to play crowd control classes. They are also frequently the most skilled and organised players, however, so people generally put up with their attitude.

Next most obnoxious are healers, followed by tanks.

DPS are generally so low on the food-chain that no-one even notices what kind of personality they have.

Hmm, I think it is very true, if you think to yourself of the "average" hunter or rogue, tell me you don't think of an immature teenager? Really? Even if you play those classes you must think of all the OTHER ones in some negative way?

It doesn't matter, I just think there is a percentage of people that are like that, because the large majority of the population are DPS (because of the way it works 1 tank 1 healer usually to a group.

Also from my experience from 11+ years of guild leading, I can honestly say that all classes have the ability to be like it.

I'd say it's more prevalent, albeit not exclusive. WoW, at it's most simple level (soloing) is about killing something before it kills you. WoW teaches you to DPS more. It doesn't teach you to tank more. It doesn't teach you to heal more. It teaches you to kill mobs.

Why are "kill 10 rats" quests the large, large majority? Why aren't there more "save 10 rats" quests? Some exist, but they're the minority.

Every rat is an NPC teaching me to kill it. Why aren't there NPCs teaching me to save them? Why can't I heal more quests to completion? Why can't I tank more quests to completion?

I'm in agreement with PJ, MMO's questing is all about kill fast. There isn't much that actually trains tanks and healers. As to the obnoxious. I din't believe it's strictly DPS. It's more to the fact that Random Dungeon finders create an attitude of zero responsibility. It doesn't matter really what class, since there are thousands and thousands of players on amongst the servers, the chances are next to nil to ever have to deal with someone again. This breeds the contemptable behaviors, not a particular class.

As a tank it infuriates me when I have a dps do stupid crap or not listen when I'm setting a fight up or a healer that isn't paying attention to thier cast times. IAs dps I hate speed tanks that don't watch thier team's mana and want to race the dungeon.

The inherent problem is that the leveling game teaches little to no group and/or class skills needed for the later part of the game.

If you consider the first 85 levels, in WoW's case, a prolonged tutorial it fails miserably to prepare the future Heroic Dungeoneer or Raider for what is to come.

Another thing is that we are confusing Anti-Social, something a number of people might accuse Gevlon of being for example, with the inability of playing one's selected group role.

Incompetence =/= Anti-Social

A player CAN be completely anti-social but still competent in his/her role to a degree that other players will leave a group after having finished a dungeon with said anti-social player feeling as if they have had a good adventure.

The inherent problem is that the leveling game teaches little to no group and/or class skills needed for the later part of the game.

Yes, but the dps often claim that this is mainly a tank/heal problem. When in reality the same problem applies to dps: They never learned to manage aggro, to /assist, to crowd control while solo leveling.

Two classes come to mind (when well played) that go against this: "never learned to manage aggro, to /assist, to crowd control while solo leveling." These being the Warlock and Hunter classes.

Back when leveling was a bit harder than it is now, a hunter/lock that wasn't paying much attention to his/her aggro was paying more in repairs than needed.

I personally don't think anti-social behavior is necessarily a DPS only thing, but like Kiseran said "playing a tank or a healer is basically real teamplay" or at least it used to be more so than it is today.

Leveling a holy paladin in TBC times (DPS output almost 0) was a heck of lot more painful alone than when you had your guild rogue and warrior with you :D and BECAUSE you weren't capable of destroying everything in your path alone you learned to play nice with other Gamers. The root of the Situation today comes back to the changes made in WotLK where Healers and Tanks could suddenly DPS 80% as much as a Dps could (to make the dailies go faster ;D)

What I am hinting at is that at the moment we perceive the community to be in the worst shape it has ever been, if this true is it due to the fact that to play (certain) MMORPGs I no longer need my fellow man to get to level cap?

I have a question for the Blogsphere: Should MMORPGS be able to be played as if they were Single Player games or are social skills and (forced) grouping necessary for a successful virtual world and community; explain why you feel the way you do.